What does a checklist accomplish?Â It ensures that each step of a process has been followed.Â In terms of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, the checklist lays out the initial Plan of what to Do, and depending upon the process, can also provide all of the necessary Check elements to ensure that the process is meeting the desired outcomes.

I was not a software developer by education.Â So when I began developing Thrive, I had to establish a way to ensure that when I developed a new feature of Thrive that the end result was something that was created with a minimal amount of defects (bugs) and with a maximum amount of value to the end user.Â Nobody wants to do something twiceâ€¦I donâ€™t even want to discover a bug, and the worst scenario is when defects reach the end user.Â The checklist I created attempts to prevent defects from being created in the first place, but also tries to uncover them before theyâ€™re â€œout the doorâ€.

From a software development standpoint, my checklist involves two core elements, with sub-lists under each main area.Â Summarized, it looks like this:

This has worked incredibly well.Â It has even worked when creating custom, â€œone-offâ€ applications.Â It ensures that everything is considered, even if it is not necessarily relevant to the current feature.Â The checklist doesnâ€™t cover every possible development scenario, but it probably covers 95% of them.Â And when the outliers arise the checklist can get refined to ensure that the process remains solid.

While a checklist is not standard work, it can certainly be the starting point, whether in manufacturing, healthcare, government, or services.Â It shouldnâ€™t be difficult to get people together to determine a basic process checklist quickly.Â From there, a more robust standard work can be developed.